Rice Caught in Iran-Contra-Style Capers in Africa
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Page 1 of 17 This article appeared in the November 20, 1998 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. Rice caught in Iran-Contra-style capers in Africa by An EIR Investigative Team An EIR team probing the causes behind the genocidal wars that have been ravaging East and Central Africa over the last four years, has uncovered a covert arms and logistical supply network run out of the U.S. State Department, which mirrors precisely the notorious Iran-Contra arms supply operation of the 1980s. As in the case of then-Vice President George Bush and Col. Oliver North's covert Iran-Contra operations, the arms and logistical supply to marauding forces in East and Central Africa is being organized "off the books," and in direct violation of the official, public policy of the United States government toward the conflicts involved. The parallel to the Bush-North operations is precise: Incontrovertible evidence accumulated by EIR demonstrates that the same extra- governmental "assets" used by North in widespread illegal narcotics- and arms-trafficking, are channelling arms and military aid into Central Africa. In this new "Central African" supply operation, standing in for the drug-smuggling gangsters of the Nicaraguan Contra operation, are the African "rebels" fighting the governments of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and any other Central African nation targetted by British intelligence's leading warlord in the region, Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni. The two leading operatives who have been caught red-handed in such dirty operations toward Central Africa are U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice, and Roger Winter, executive director of the U.S. Committee on Refugees. EIR has uncovered two, overlapping operations. First, is the covert supply of arms to the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) of John Garang, which has waged a totally unsuccessful but nevertheless genocidal war against the Sudan government since 1983. The second involves covert military logistical aid to the so-called rebel forces arrayed against the government of Laurent Kabila in the Democratic file://C:\DOCUME~1\God\LOCALS~1\Temp\09GCNVP7.htm 5/22/2008 Page 2 of 17 Republic of Congo, an operation being run directly out of the U.S. State Department with the oversight of Rice. Drug-runners, Mossad, and mercenaries Doing the dirty work are Israeli, American, European, and Ugandan operatives, including: Michael Harari, a longtime top agent of Israeli foreign intelligence, the Mossad, who was a security adviser to Panamanian Defense Forces Gen. Manuel Noriega. As the Mossad station chief for Central and South America in the late 1970s and into the 1980s until the U.S. invasion of Panama, after which he returned to Israel, Harari coordinated the Mossad's gun-running and drug-trafficking operations in South America. Alberto Prado Herreros, a suspected drug-trafficker and confirmed director of a Miami-based arms company called Lomax International. Herreros was a prime contractor for the Bush-North Contra supply operation. Daniel Eiffe, the coordinator for Central Africa of Norwegian People's Aid, which poses as a relief organization. The Norwegian government cut it off from funding in May 1998 because of its overt military and logistical support for Garang's SPLA. Brig. Gen. James Kazini, a nephew of Ugandan dictator Museveni and the chief of staff of the Ugandan Popular Defense Forces. Kazini has been directly in charge of the Ugandan military operations against Sudan, and is now in charge on the ground of the Ugandan army invasion of the Congo. According to reports in the pro-government Ugandan daily New Vision, Kazini was last known to be stationed in Kisangani, Congo, and aided the Ugandan-Rwandan takeover of Kisangani and Bunia. Moreover, the parallel to North's Contra supply operation is strategic. It was after Vice President Bush permitted the British to flagrantly violate the U.S. Monroe Doctrine, by furnishing his backing of Britain's Malvinas War against Argentina in 1982, that Bush then pursued the Contra option in Nicaragua, violating Congressional restrictions through providing the Contras' needs "off the books." That caper went into high gear after the Reagan administration rejected American statesman Lyndon LaRouche's Operation Juárez solution to the South American debt crisis. LaRouche's August 1982 plan called for a debt moratorium in the Ibero-American countries and a policy of economic development based on the export of capital goods to the Southern Hemisphere. With the rejection of LaRouche's proposal, Bush forced through the bogus idea of the communist threat from the Sandinista regime in Managua, as justification for a policy that, in reality, supported the Contra drug- file://C:\DOCUME~1\God\LOCALS~1\Temp\09GCNVP7.htm 5/22/2008 Page 3 of 17 trafficking, boosted the Colombian narco-terrorist cartels, and flooded the United States with illegal drugs. This demonstrated that Ibero- America could expect nothing more from the United States than a British colonial-style policy of war, narco-terrorism, and economic exploitation. In Africa today, the Nicaragua bogeyman has been replaced by the government of Sudan, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, or any other government or political force on the continent which stands in the way of a policy to extract every ounce of mineral wealth, with no benefit whatever to the countries possessing such wealth. This is the driving force behind the destruction of the nation-state by mercenary armies--such as Museveni's Ugandans or Rwandan Defense Minister Paul Kagame's forces--a policy that has cost the lives of millions of people. The architects of this policy reside in London and the boardrooms of the British Commonwealth mining companies, financial institutions, and private paramilitary-security firms. While most of the players in this trade have been based in Britain or the Commonwealth countries, our report will focus on the channel that comes into and operates through the United States and also Israel, in the hopes that the Clinton administration will take appropriate action. War or peace? The evidence gathered by the EIR team, even if incomplete, tends to confirm the many rumors and allegations circulating throughout Central Africa and among those involved in Africa policy in Europe and elsewhere, that while the U.S. government's public policy to attempt to act as the "honest mediator" in the war around the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United States is, in fact, supporting--with arms, supplies, training, and logistical support--those very forces under the control of Uganda and Rwanda, which violated international law to invade the Congo on Aug. 2, and now hold large chunks of its eastern and central territory. Thus, while Susan Rice was engaging in highly publicized shuttling among Central African capitals, to demand that Congo allies Angola and Zimbabwe withdraw their troops from the Congo, in order to prevent a "wider conflagration," back in Washington, EIR has uncovered, her underlings were in the process of vetting private contractors to give logistical support to the Ugandan- and Rwandan-backed rebels in the Congo. The operation mirrors precisely that carried out for the Contra supply operation out of the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office in the State Department during the 1980s. In this case, according to a confidential source, under Rice's direction, Ricardo Zuniga, operations officer for the State Department's East African Affairs section, is seeking file://C:\DOCUME~1\God\LOCALS~1\Temp\09GCNVP7.htm 5/22/2008 Page 4 of 17 aid from private contractors to supply and provide an airlift to Museveni's combatants in the Congo. Zuniga is reportedly a middle-level foreign service officer, with previous postings in Mexico and Portugal. Within the State Department, it is widely believed that Rice's closest adviser on Africa is Roger Winter, director of the U.S. Committee on Refugees, who has rammed through the policy of war in Central Africa as the policy of the State Department. In September 1997, Winter, along with John Prendergast of the U.S. National Security Council, declared Rice to be one of their "team" to lead the United States into support of a total war against the government of Sudan, to be waged on the ground by the Ugandan and allied armies. Rice's other key adviser is Philip Gourevitch, a journalist with The New Yorker, who has fashioned a career for himself in the last four years as an expert on the bloodletting in Rwanda in 1994. He is known to be personally close to Rwandan Defense Minister Kagame. Prior to joining The New Yorker, Gourevitch was the New York correspondent for the neo-conservative Jewish weekly, The Forward. [FIGURE 201] This covert operation in support of the Congolese "rebels," and by direct implication the invasion of Ugandan and Rwanda in the Congo, contradicts the stated policy of the United States, particularly that put forward on Oct. 17 by the new U.S. Ambassador to the Congo, William Swing, who said on Kinshasa TV, "We condemned the external military interference from countries such as Rwanda and Uganda back in August. It is President Clinton who accredited me to President Kabila and his government. This should represent for you a signal and evidence of where we stand in our relations with your country. I am here to support your government." Whose policy is Susan Rice carrying out? EIR is in possession of more detailed information concerning the operations uncovered than we present in this report. The file is by no means closed, and EIR is continuing to dig deeper, to uncover the real causes behind the terrible slaughter and suffering that have ravaged Africa under the regional leadership of Museveni.